Are we any happier?
The question is sometimes raised to cast doubt on the value of economic growth. We’re twice as rich as we were a generation ago, some claim, but surveys show we are no happier now than we were then, so why bother?
Happiness is a notoriously difficult thing to measure. In the absence of a hedonometer to press against someone’s forehead and read off the figure the needle points to, we are left with subjective opinions. These typically take the form of self-assessed questionnaires. People might be asked whether they are very happy, mildly content, neither happy nor unhappy, mildly unhappy or very unhappy. The results are then collated to put people somewhere on a scale from ecstatic to miserable.
Problems arise. Since these are done many years apart, in most cases the people being interviewed are not the same as those who originally replied. Then again, standards may have changed. It might take more to make people feel happy in one time than it does in another. We can hope to learn what proportion of people say they feel happy now, and compare it with the proportion who said they felt so previously, but it is not comparing like with like.
Comparative affluence appears to play some part, in that people who feel comfortably off are less exposed to some of the major causes of worry and unhappiness. And security is believed to play some part. People who feel unsafe are unlikely to be happy at the thought. Daily dire warnings about overheating the planet combine with warnings of imminent wars to leave many people uneasy about the future and less happy in consequence.
The possibility of advancing one’s position plays a part, too, in that people in rich but static societies report they feel less happy than those in less rich societies that offer more opportunities for personal advancement.
There is the question as to how much of happiness derives from circumstance and how much from character. The main causes of unhappiness are sometimes listed as bereavement and divorce, about which individuals can do little to avoid. It is possible that the differences in the happiness of people do not arise from the different fortunes that befall them, but from the different ways in which they respond to whatever fortune befalls them.
The glass half empty leads people to look backward at what is gone. The glass half full leads them forward to what the future offers.